Maxime de la Rocheterie on Marie-Antoinette

"She was not a guilty woman, neither was she a saint; she was an upright, charming woman, a little frivolous, somewhat impulsive, but always pure; she was a queen, at times ardent in her fancies for her favourites and thoughtless in her policy, but proud and full of energy; a thorough woman in her winsome ways and tenderness of heart, until she became a martyr."

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

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The phrase was covered with ink sometime after it was written. There is
still debate about who, exactly, redacted these phrases; there is
currently still work being done by researchers at the French archives
regarding the blotted out phrases in Marie Antoinette's letters, and I
do hope that they will be able to date the 'redacted' ink which may help
in coming closer to discovering who actually covered them. Given the
difference in copper concentration between the ink used to write the
letters and the ink used to cover it, it is unlikely that Marie
Antoinette herself covered the phrase.

To continue: Telegraph quotes Farr as saying: "‘I love you madly’ is a
very strong phrase – you don’t say that to a good friend. It’s really
telling; it implies a physical relationship. They were lovers."

There are actually two claims being made here: one, that "I love you
madly" would not have been used for a good friend but only to a lover;
two, that it implies a physical relationship existed between those two
people.

In French, what Marie Antoinette wrote to Fersen was that she loved him 'à la folie.' This exact phrase (loving someoneà la folie)
was used by the queen several years earlier, when talking about her
love for her son Louis-Charles, in a letter to the duchesse de 'Polignac
dated December 1789: "The Chou d'amour is charming, and I love him madly."
Madame Elisabeth, her sister-in-law, used that same phrase in letters
describing the sister of Mirabeau's love for her brother: "I pity his unfortunate sister, who is very pious and loved him madly."

From these examples, we see that loving someone "madly" was not a
phrasing which existed solely for lovers in the 18th century. And if "I
love you madly" must imply physical relationship, then from these two
examples--well, you get the idea.

Critically, the claim that "I love you madly" is for lovers only and
that it implies a physical relationship does not hold up when you
compare it to other contemporary letters from that time period. The
claim also wavers when you take into consideration Marie Antoinette's
personal style of writing. "I love you madly" does not differ very much
from phrases Marie Antoinette regularly wrote to people she genuinely
adored.

The intensity with which Marie
Antoinette wrote to people she considered her cherished companions cannot be overstated. Her
letters to these few--people she knew from childhood, people she brought
into her intimate 'Trianon' circle, and those who remained loyal to her
during the Revolution--are contain such gushing phrases as "I kiss you
tenderly," "It would be a great pleasure for me to kiss you," "My
feelings for you are tender and grow every day," "my tender heart," "my
dear heart," "I kiss you with all my heart," "I embrace you with all my
soul," "I will never cease to love you," "I kiss you hard," and other flourishes that would easily be
considered romantic today. Marie Antoinette wrote to Yolande de Polignac
saying that "nothing but death could make me stop loving you."

Could lovers have used the phrase? Of course. But in the context of
Marie Antoinette and Fersen, it's not some outlier phrasing that is
totally incongruous with Marie Antoinette's normal style. It shows that
she considered him an intimate, loved companion who wasn't just loyal to
her but was, by all her accounts, fighting for her life and the
life of her family. If there was any point where Marie Antoinette was
going to use her trademark tender, romantic phrases, the years where
Fersen was an almost sole outside devotee when she was living in a
country that was increasingly hostile to her is definitely that point.

And remember: "I love you madly" was not hidden by the queen. It was
written plainly in her letter to Fersen, as were her romantic phrases in letters to her
other cherished loved ones.

If this was a phrase reserved for
lovers, it is extremely unlikely that Marie Antoinette would ever risk
everything (her security, the future of her children, the stability of
the monarchy, her reputation to the European powers, to name a few
things) by so casually revealing something that was considered
treasonous. So what does the phrase mean? The answer is genuinely
simple: Marie Antoinette wrote passionately, romantically, gushingly to
people she considered intimate friends. Before and after the revolution.
And she knew how to use that flattering language to keep people on her
side, when she needed to do so, and she definitely needed to bring
Fersen back around after his recent criticisms and fears, which I will get more into below.

The role that Fersen played in the last years of Marie Antoinette's life
was an intense one, that in all likelihood bonded them emotionally in a
way that is difficult to imagine today. He was, in the queen's
estimation, working to save their lives. He was one of the few people
who was willing to take an active role in saving the royal family and
the crown, beyond vague promises by foreign rulers or the dangerous
behavior of the emigrated Artois and Provence elsewhere in Europe or the
royal family's distrust of moderates who claimed to be working in their
favor. Is it any wonder that Marie Antoinette wrote to him as she did
other intimates like Polignac, so favored that she had to flee France?
In my estimation, no.

As with the use of gossip as evidence, using this phrase and similar
phrases as evidence that the two were physical lovers does not stand up
to an extrapolating critical view. Marie Antoinette wrote this way--many
women of that time period wrote this way.

If "I love you madly" proves that Marie Antoinette and Axel Fersen were
physical lovers, then it stands to reason that "Nothing but death can
make me stop loving you" should be used as proof that Marie Antoinette
and Yolande de Polignac were also physical lovers. Yet once again, I
doubt historians would claim that because the Queen wrote romantically
to Polignac, they were lovers, physical or otherwise, due to the context
of Marie Antoinette's personality and the general romantic writing
style of her contemporaries.

The context of January 4th, 1792

The context of the letter of January 1792 is important.

This was, politically speaking, a very tense time for Europe, France,
and of course Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI. For the last several
months, Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI had been embarking on course of
action that none of their allies--Fersen included--had really approved.
That course of action was to play both sides: ally themselves with
Barnave and other constitutionals, all the while keeping up their
correspondence with Fersen, Craufurd, Breteuil, and various European
monarchs. In September of 1791, Louis XVI had also accepted the
Constitution and the royal couple decided to outwardly support the
Constitution, not just to appease the rumblings in the government but
to, as Louis XVI put it, show the people that the Constitution could not
work by following it to the letter.

Abroad, this had the effect of sending the emigres, the king's brothers
and European monarchs into a war-minded frenzy. The king's brothers were
stirring the pot by spear-heading the raising of emigre-based armies
with the intention of sending those armies into France to take back
control over the country.

On December 14th, 1791, Louis XVI--without consulting or notifying
Fersen and the others in contact with the queen--addressed the Assembly
and declared that any European powers which did not disband emigre-based
troops by January 15th, 1792 would be considered enemies of France.
Furthermore, he declared that the wrote to Leopold II and informed him
that he was fully prepared to declare war on Austria if those troops
were not disbanded.

Eight days later, Fersen wrote Marie Antoinette a lengthy letter which
contained what the queen later referred to as 'scoldings.' In this
letter, Fersen admonished the queen for not being openly affectionate
towards people he was trying to get on their side. M. de Toulangeon was
"hurt by the coldness with which his good intentions were received,"
which Fersen followed up with: "Do you not think that, without too
highly distinguishing them, it would be well to show persons of
good-feeling and good-will certain marks of kindness?" He wrote in a
similar way regarding the queen's unease about attempting to win over
the Duke of Brunswick: "[He] is a man of intelligence, talents, and a
great ambition. Do you not think it is important to win him?"

Yet the 'scoldings' in this letter did not stop there. Fersen then wrote
that he was astounded and grieved by the king's unsupported decision,
and that he now saw only "embarrassment for you, additional dangers, and
the bad effect that this will have in Europe." Fersen went on to
suggest that Marie Antoinette should not have acted without consulting
Fersen and Breteuil, and that by doing so she invited disastrous
consequences.

He also questioned the queen's confidence in him, particularly in light of his own gushing devotion: "I
have the vanity to think that my past conduct ought to take you from
the possibility of doubting mine; it ought, rather, to convince you of
their purity, and of the zeal, attachment, and devotion I have
consecrated to your service. My sole desire is to serve you; my sweetest
recompense, the only one to which I aspire, is the glory of succeeding
in that--I want no other. I should be but too much rewarded if I could
know you were happy and think that I had been happy enough to have
contributed to it."

Is it any wonder that Marie Antoinette, who had excelled at charming
people from an early age, knew how to reassure Fersen--who, by the tone
of this letter and those leading up to it, was becoming increasingly
critical of her and wary of her decisions? Fersen himself said it best: "Do you not think that it would
be well to show persons of good-feeling and good-will certain marks of
kindness?" Fersen wanted reassurance that the queen trusted him,
that she accepted his devotion, and that she considered his confidence
worthy of respect. And she did just that, as she had throughout the last
year to this years-long friend who she saw as fighting for the
salvation of her family and, from her view, for her country. (Read more.)

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